


Empty Spaces

by kowaiyoukai



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abandonment, Angst, Daddy Issues, Gen, M/M, Stream of Consciousness, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-27
Updated: 2009-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-30 17:49:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kowaiyoukai/pseuds/kowaiyoukai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean thought of their father, all he thought of was an empty space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> Coda to 4x19. Written and finished five hours after I saw Jump the Shark. This is a direct response to both that episode and the overall dramatic arc of season 4.

The night after he had burned the body of a brother he had never known, Dean found himself staring at the faded patterns of the blanket on his motel bed. Sam's even breath was comforting, as it always was, a steady presence that let him know his brother—his real brother, the only brother he could ever count on—was right at his side, where he was meant to be. Dean's eyes traced the thread in the blanket, fingers cataloguing where the thread was pulled upwards, exposing a small hole, and where it was stretched too far, the thin line becoming even thinner as it struggled to hold the blanket together. At some other time, another person had laid here and played with the thread. That person had pulled and pushed it, twisting it out of boredom, and the effects of that were still clear. It probably hadn't even been one person—it had been several people, hundreds, thousands of them. All of them had lain here and fiddled with this thread, wondering how they could leave their mark on it, what the best ways were to take it and change it, to make it so that it could barely be used for its purpose anymore.

Dean rubbed a hand over his eyes and sat up. He glanced over at Sam, whose eyes were closed and mouth was open and who looked as though he needed more sleep than he ever got. Dean quietly got off the bed, moved through the motel room with confidence even though he had barely seen it when they had gotten in, and found himself digging through their belongings. In seconds he had the journal, Dad's journal, and then he grabbed his keys and went outside in his t-shirt and sweatpants, making sure to leave the door unlocked behind him.

It was dark and quiet, both on the short walk to the parking lot and once he was inside the Impala. The seats were worn-in, comforting in a way that Sam's presence could never be—comforting in a way that said _I am here, I will always be here, and I will never leave you_. The small marks inside the car, imprints on the seats, scratches on the dash, fingerprints on the handles, stains on the upholstery—all of those were marks of possession. Dean owned this car, and they both knew it. Sam wasn't owned and could never be owned, not in the way an inanimate object could be, and so Dean could rely on the Impala whenever Sam was simply not an option.

Dean remembered how Sam had responded at the impromptu pyre. Sam had held himself steady, eyes shining from either the light of the fire or whatever deep emotions he had been feeling or something else entirely, and he had taken Dean's words as a compliment. Dean hadn't said it as either a compliment or an insult. That Sam was more like their father than Dean ever could be was a fact. Dean had stated it out loud more to make peace with himself than anything else. This was something that he was never going to be able to change about himself. After years of struggling to be like Dad, to like what Dad liked and do what made Dad proud, this was Dean finally taking a stand. More than two years after his father's death, Dean was able to say that he wasn't like his father and would never be like his father in all of the ways that mattered.

Sam was like Dad. He was proud of it. He had taken it as a _compliment_. Dean didn't know what to do with that. When Dean thought of their father, all he thought of was an empty space. His father had been the literal definition of an absent father. Someone who was just _not there_. Dean remembered his father in flashes of comings and goings—doors opening and closing, the Impala driving away, keys turning in locks, waking up to notes next to circled newspaper articles and salt poured in heavy lines across all the doors and windows. If it had only been an empty space where his father should have been, if the only memories Dean had to come to terms with were sitting alone at Parent-Teacher Day and going grocery shopping at the nearest 7-Eleven by himself, he could have come to a kind of peace. Explanations could have been made. He could have thought up as many excuses as it took to keep his father in an idolized position. But it had been more than that. It had been about Sammy, just like everything always was.

Dean remembered coming home to wherever he called home and knowing that Sammy would be inside, wondering where Dad was and when he was coming home. He didn't have to remember one specific town or one specific instance. It had been all of the towns, every time he had gotten home. Every single time he had to open that door, Sammy's face would brighten and then fall, just a little, just enough to let Dean know that he wasn't who Sammy had wanted to see. Then Sammy would smile at him and they would talk for a few minutes before the questions would come, and Dean quickly had to get used to dodging answers and pretending to be far more ignorant than he truly was. Looking back now, Dean couldn't help but wonder. All those times he had gotten home and disappointed Sammy, what had their father been doing? Dean had always gotten through it because he had assumed John was on a hunt, was saving people's lives and killing nightmare monsters and being the hero Dean had known he was. Looking after Sammy while John was hunting was not a problem. Now, and Dean hated that he had to think it, what if John hadn't been hunting?

Of course Dean knew John hadn't lied to them all the time. But there had been times that he had. And how could Dean ever know which times were lies and which were truth? He opened the journal, flipping through it, but there were far more dates that weren't accounted for than the ones that were, and some pages were ripped out in several places, and there were enough mentions of Minnesota and the states surrounding it that Dean threw the journal in the passenger seat, unable to look at it any more. There was no way to be sure. There would never be any way to be sure.

The more Dean thought about John's absences, the more he knew he was inventing impossible scenarios. That time Sammy had been bullied at that one high school, in that one town Dean had hated and tried to never think about, what had John been doing then? The timing wasn't exact and it was odd to even be thinking about the timing of these kinds of things, but why not, Dean's mind said, sure, why not, maybe Dad had been off with another woman and raising another family. Maybe Dad had been too busy helping Adam with his homework to care that Sammy was being bullied and that Dean was trying to get through school and help Sam without being overbearing or ridiculously motherly. Maybe Dad had been teaching Adam to drive while Dean was trying to figure out whether to make Sam's lunch or give him money for the school one, or whether he should show up for Sam's presentation when the flyer said parents were invited, or just how much he could insert himself into Sam's life before Sam shoved him out, hard, in a fierce bid for independence. While Dean had been struggling to figure all these things out, everything that no one had ever explained to him or even expected him to do, maybe Dad had been sitting around a dinner table, eating a homemade meal by some woman he was fucking who wasn't Mom and listening to stories about a kid's day at school who wasn't Sam.

Once that thought struck him, it was easy to see the pattern, even though Dean knew it was a lie. Dean knew—Adam's age, the dates Dad was missing, the hunts—not everything added up to what he was creating, but somehow it didn't seem to matter. The Christmas Sam had given him the necklace he still wore and cherished, what had Dad been doing then? After Sam had fallen asleep the night before, Dean remembered sneaking out of the motel room. He remembered searching the town they were in for a nice-looking house. Not the biggest or most expensive looking, just a nice normal-looking house. And when he had found one, he had broken in, not caring even a bit that he was ruining some kid's Christmas. That kid had presents under a tree and a house to live in and parents who were there. That kid could live with a few missing toys. Dean remembered stealing a few presents, just enough so that Sam would have something to open, and then leaving before he was discovered. He remembered giving them to Sam later on, and when Sam had opened them and they were girl's toys, Dean had wanted to destroy something. Nothing he did was ever right, and even trying to give Sam a Christmas he could enjoy was impossible to achieve. Then Sam had given him the necklace and everything was all right, and things stayed all right for a long while after that, but Dean still remembered how not all right they had been. He still remembered Sam crying himself to sleep knowing that Dad wouldn't show up even though he had promised to. And now Dean couldn't help but think about Dad leaving them and going to see his other family, the better family he had made for himself when Dean and Sam had turned out to be too screwed up to try and fix. Dean could picture it—his father sitting on a couch next to a blonde woman who looked nothing like Mom but could pass if someone was really desperate, and a kid on the floor opening a pile of presents under a fake tree lit up with blinking colors and ornaments that spun around when flicked. The kid, Adam, of course it would have been Adam, was smiling. They all were smiling. Dean and Sam weren't smiling that day. Even after the necklace had been given, they still hadn't smiled.

Still, the kid didn't have to be Adam. If John had one kid he had kept secret, who's to say there weren't more around. There could be more half-brothers walking around. Dean could have more hidden family members, more children who had been given happiness when Dean and Sam had been given none.

Dean breathed deeply, inhaling the familiar scent of the Impala's interior. He was being ridiculous. He was panicking, and he knew it, but somehow knowing it didn't make it stop. The one thought Dean had held onto through everything was that protecting Sammy was worth everything he had given up. And it was—it was. Protecting Sam was worth his life and more. But if Dad had left them alone to be with another family, a family he had created to be perfect, to be everything Dean and Sam could never be? Then it had never been about protecting Sam. It had been about giving John a break, about letting John relax when he needed to.

Dean didn't want to be like a man who would leave his children alone for days because he needed a break from them. Dean didn't want to be like a man who would give up on one family and create a second, secret one. He couldn't understand why Sam would want to be like that, why Sam had taken it as a compliment, but in truth, it didn't matter. Although they had both abandoned him at different times, Sam had stayed with Dean longer than John ever had. Sam cared for and loved Dean more than John ever could. If Dean saw bits of John in Sam sometimes, it didn't have to mean anything. It didn't have to mean that when Sam went off to train with Ruby, he was leaving Dean alone. It didn't have to mean that when Sam went against what Dean wanted to go down a darker path, he was preparing Dean for when he would really leave, for when he would go try to save the world in some dark place that Dean could never reach.

Somehow, though, it did. And if Dean remembered taking care of Sam when John was a huge, echoing space in their motel room, then the images of the recent past were burned much more brightly into his head. Sam and Dean willing to give up their souls, to change their lives around, to become evil and twisted and everything they never wanted to be—all to save each other.

Maybe Sam _would_ leave. Maybe Dean would wake up one morning and Sam would simply be gone, leaving a void so big Dean would feel it aching through every step and breath he ever took from that point onward. If that was the case, Dean knew there was nothing he could do about it. But family came first, and Dean would continue to give up everything he had to save Sam, even if Sam was determined to bring about his own destruction. Sam might be like John, but Dean knew he himself was not. Dean knew he would never be able to abandon his family for a fake one, for a family that might appear better, but in reality was a façade. Dean would never abandon Sam because Sam was his life, his everything, and he would go to hell _again_ before he let Sam down.

Their father had let them down. But Dean wasn't like that. And he knew he never would be.

_fin._


End file.
